B of A moving 200 jobs to Nevada

Friday, Dec. 18, 1998 | 11:55 a.m.

More than 200 new jobs will come to Las Vegas when Bank of America shifts its work force around the Southwest early next year.

A call center employing 180 people will be expanded to 400 in the second quarter of 1999. Two-hundred of those 220 jobs are being moved to Las Vegas, a bank spokesman said Thursday.

The expansion is occurring as the Charlotte, N.C.-based bank digests the merger of the old Bank of America with NationsBank.

The new jobs will come to Las Vegas as a result of a giant round of musical chairs for Nevada's largest bank. Here's how it will happen:

A 350-employee customer service call center based in Phoenix will be expanded by 50 people. Half of those employees will move to Las Vegas and the other half will go to Rio Rancho, N.M., a suburb of Albuquerque.

An old NationsBank credit card call center in Rio Rancho will be transferred to Phoenix and join a 2,000-employee Bank of America credit card center there.

Bank of America-Nevada spokesman Paul Stowell said he did not know the location of other call centers that would close in the Bank of America-NationsBank consolidations.

The Las Vegas call center, at 4101 E. Charleston Blvd., will be outgrown with the arrival of 200 new employees. Stowell said the company is the process of evaluating office space for a new location. He did not disclose where the bank is looking.

The call center, which fields account inquiries, provides information on loan and savings rates and opens new accounts, will serve callers from Nevada and Arizona. Stowell said the new center would have the capability to expand in the future.

The Phoenix employees at the closing call center, who make as much as $12 an hour there, will have the option of transferring to the credit-card division in that city, relocating to Las Vegas or Rio Rancho or taking a severance package.

Employees who leave the company would get three weeks of severance pay for every year of service to the company with a minimum of 13 weeks of pay, Stowell said.

Because transferring employees will get the first opportunity for the new Las Vegas jobs, the new positions won't be advertised until late in the first quarter or early in the second quarter, Stowell said.

Because of favorable credit card law in Arizona, several banks have opened centers in that state. As a result, the labor market has been spread thinner in Arizona. Stowell said that should make it easier for the bank to attract new employees in Las Vegas and Rio Rancho.